Monday, September 2, 2013

The Lawyer/Business Person Dichotomy

"You are not a
businessman."

" And you are
not a lawyer."

This was the substance of a spirited
"discussion" I had with a client a couple of weeks ago.The exchange has stayed with me because I think it
illustrates an important and often-overlooked distinction.

I wish I was more of a businessman.I think all solo lawyers are by definition
entrepreneurial but after three decades of doing this, I know that I lack a
number of the fundamentals of business acumen.However, I am confident that I make up for that deficit by being
analytical, by being able to evaluate risk and most of all by being aware of
what needs to be done to protect the client.

There is the rub.Not all clients want to be protected.A lawyer (at least the ones who do their job) often gets caught between
trying to advise the client to do the prudent thing and the client's other
strategic goals.If you read enough
advertising and marketing materials, you will see those ads by lawyers who boast
that they excel at "bet‑the-company" litigation.This always strikes me as foolish.Only in the most dire of circumstances would
a businessperson ever decide that it is worth it to "bet the
company".I have tried to make one
of my mission statements :(there, that's a business term isn't it?) that I
"help people find solutions to complex problems".That really is the challenge where law and
business intersect. In other words, a lawyer should help to advance a client’s
goals while at the same time protecting the client’s interests. Sometimes that
means trying to protect the client against themselves.

This can play out in many ways.In transactional work, it could mean knowing
approximately how much you can ask for without blowing a deal.In litigation it is much more complex.Any lawyer will tell you that settlement is
always preferable to risking a trial; there are too many variables.Sometimes there's a lot of posturing, like an
expensive game of chicken.We like to
think that the world is a rational place.The older I get, the more I
realize that this is a fallacy.In the
end, there's going to be a constant struggle between the particular kind of
mindset it takes to succeed in business and analytical lawyerly risk
evaluation.This is not a bad dichotomy,
it keeps us all employed. Sometimes
though, it is startling to realize that
it is in fact a very real dichotomy and one that can often cause tension in
lawyer-client relationships.